Although systems for monitoring drilling are known, these monitoring systems do not provide sufficient information for completely automated control. That is, these systems cannot emulate manual operation of the drilling operation and therefore cannot eliminate the need for manual intervention in the drill control. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,760,735 relates to a method and apparatus for monitoring a drilling process by measuring torque applied at the surface to a drill string and by measuring effective torque acting on the drill bit. This information can be accumulated in real time and displayed to the operator to assist the operator in manual adjustment of drilling control.
In a paper entitled "Instrumentation On Blasthole Drills Produces Significant Economic Benefits" by John F. Vynne, Second International Symposium On Mine Planning And Equipment Selection In Surface Mining, Calgary Nov. 1990, a discussion is presented of electronic instruments for use with monitoring rotary blasthole drills. One such device is a drilling efficiency indicator for displaying information (e.g., depth drilled, rate of penetration) to the drill operator. Using this information, the drill operator is able to manually adjust drilling control parameters to improve the drilling operation. Any such information can be recorded to provide on-line monitoring (e.g., indicate if a parameter goes into an "out of limit" condition) and recording during a drilling operation.
Despite the existence of drill control capabilities and the existence of some limited on-line monitoring of drilling parameters, currently monitored parameters do not provide automated drill control which avoids the need for human intervention. Current monitoring systems do not detect parameters which would permit emulated human control of a drilling operation. Accordingly, there is a need to detect parameters which can be measured in real-time for optimizing drill control (i.e., drilling efficiency) without overstressing the machine. Further, there is a need for a completely automated control system which, in addition to optimizing the drill operation itself, anti also reduces or eliminates the potential for human error in all phases of the drill operation (e.g., drill set-up, transport and so forth).